There are bugs when it goes online. How far can the Shibarium mainnet launched by Shiba Inu go?

Original author: Felix, PANews

After a long wait, after a long wait in the community, Shiba Inu launched the Shibarium mainnet on August 16, positioning it as an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution. But since Shibarium launched, the price of Shiba Inu and related tokens has plummeted, and rumors of a major technical error on the Shibarium network have been circulating.

Shiba Inu previously claimed that Shibarium has been tested for several months, with millions of users participating and 21 million wallets created. Shibarium is built on a new consensus mechanism called Proof of Participation (PoP), where validators are selected in proportion to the amount of the relevant cryptocurrency they hold. This is done to avoid the computational cost of proof-of-work schemes. The new L2 blockchain solution is designed to interface with the main Ethereum Layer 1 blockchain, providing a more scalable and cost-effective transaction platform. Shibarium will leverage BONE, TREAT, SHIB, and LEASH tokens to build blockchain-based applications with a focus on metaverse and gaming applications, especially considering the NFT space is expected to heat up in the coming years.

In addition, Shiba Inu said that Layer 2 validators will be rewarded with a governance token called BONE. Users must lock 10,000 BONE in the Shibarium network to become a validator. 21 million BONE will be reserved as rewards for validators and delegators within the Shibarium ecosystem and used to pay authorized Gas fees.

Before the Shibarium mainnet launch, Shiba Inus lead developer (alias Shytoshi Kusama) pointed out that Shibarium has great traction in new projects. In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), the developer shared a screenshot of companies currently developing on Shibarium, saying more than 100 companies are already using it.

However, Shiba Inu encountered technical problems shortly after its launch. According to screenshots of internal Telegram conversations between Shibarium developers, lead developer Shytoshi Kusama revealed that the team was unable to recover assets bridged to the Shibarium network.

Another screenshot showed a Shibarium user encountering technical issues with the block explorer, saying they were unable to query their bridge balance via RPC. Shortly after initial reports of the issue began, users were banned from sending messages on the Discord community forum.

On-chain detective ZachXBT said that it has not yet confirmed whether the assets are actually lost, but pointed out that RPC (the node running the key blockchain client software) is no longer functional, and described the block explorer Shibarium Scan as very bad. PANews inquired about the Shibarium Scan block explorer. The Shibarium network stopped producing blocks for 8 hours, and then resumed block production for 20 minutes. Currently, the block production is still stopped, and the Shibarium RPC website has also been closed.

Community members believe this could indicate a flaw in the bridge, a blockchain-based tool that transfers tokens between different networks. Bridges remain one of the most important yet highly vulnerable segments of the crypto market. The total amount locked on the network is close to $2.46 million, including $1.7 million worth of Ethereum and another $762,000 worth of Shibarium governance token BONE.

With the launch of Shibarium, holders are hopeful for significant appreciation in the value of SHIB, Shibariums governance token BONE, and LEASH tokens. However, these wishes were quickly dashed. Related tokens, led by SHIB, fell one after another. Coingecko data shows that as of 20:00 (Beijing time) on the 17th, Shiba Inu (SHIB) fell 9.6% in 24 hours. Related tokens Bone and Leash fell by 21.6% and 23.1% respectively.

During the 2020-2021 bull market, the SHIB token rose in popularity, even surpassing Dogecoin at one point. However, SHIB failed to maintain its gains for a long time and fell by more than 80% in the bear market. But the drop in price hasn’t stopped the Shiba Inu community, which has built a decentralized ecosystem around cryptocurrencies, including decentralized exchange ShibaSwap and native token BONE, as well as Metaverse and Web3 games. It is not difficult to see that the Shiba Inu community, which is constantly doing things, hopes to create a prosperous SHIB ecology, but this technical event has added a touch of joke to the project that already has a joke background.

References: Cointelegraph, CoinDesk, The Block